Terror In Tinsel Town

"I'm fuckin' awesome right now, I just met Tony Soprano," tells Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter whilst standing outside of Paul Brown's studio in Culver City, CA. Through the receiver on the other end of the phone, you can hear someone else yell, "Hey, the mom from Home Alone just drove by..." What next? Belinda Carlisle hanging out on the street corner?

"Everyone is fine," Mark continues, "I'm just glad everyone is okay. We'll continue on to make a full throttle, ass ripping metal video at a later date." Mark speaks in reference to their video shoot being set ablaze, literally.

Last night (Mar 3) Chimaira arrived in L.A. to shoot the video for "Down Again," a track off their upcoming The Impossibility Of Reason CD. They hung out with some of the boys from Spineshank at the Rainbow. Everything was fine.

Yesterday (Mar 4), they started the video shoot at Paul Brown's studio. Something about a tomb, a lot of white gauze, and the band doing the performance portion of the video. Everything was fine.

"Basically, we were eating lunch, looked over, and someone said the set is on fire." Everything not fine. "It went up in like a second, dude. In a split second it was taller than a person." And a minute later, the sprinklers were on, everyone was outside, the fire department on the way...

All happened around 2:00pm PST, the Chimaira video shoot up in smoke. Once again, everyone involved is fine. As for the video contingency plan? "We'll tell you when we know," explains Mark. "For now, gonna enjoy the rest of the evening in sunny LA...till then, smoke acid." and surely that last comment was meant in the nicest possible way...folks, do not try such deeds at home...

Currently, Chimaira is scheduled fly back to the greater Cleveland area this afternoon (Mar 5)...but who knows now? We'll update the Chimaira video situation once Plan B has been established.

"It'd be a shame should something happen to your video shoot" - Tony Soprano...for photos from the day (including Chimaira with James Gandolfini), check out Chimaira's PHOTO GALLERY.